round spectacles, that in the dimly lighted apartment and its nocturnal
associations are highly suggestive of owls and owlish wisdom. The old
quack works away at his mortar, regardless of the approach of daybreak,
now and then pausing to adjust the wick in his little saucer of grease,
or to indulge in the luxury of a peanut.

Such are the experiences of my first night at a Chinese village hittim;
they will not soon be forgotten.

The proprietor of the hittim seems overjoyed at my liberality as I
present him a ten-cent string of tsin for the night's lodging. Small as
it sounds, this amount is probably three or four times more than he
obtains from his Chinese guests.

The country beyond Chun-Kong-hoi is alternately level and hilly, the
former highly cultivated, and the latter occupied mostly with graves.
Peanut harvest is in progress, and men, women, and children are
everywhere about the fields. The soil of a peanut-bed to the depth of
several inches is dug up and all passed through a sieve, the meshes of
which are of the proper size to retain the nuts. The last possible grain,
nut, or particle of life-sustaining vegetable or insect life is extracted
from the soil, ducks and chickens being cooped and herded on the fields
and gardens after human ingenuity has reached its limit of research.

Big wooden pails of warm tea stand about the fields, from which everybody
helps himself when thirsty. A party of peanut-harvesters are regaling
themselves with stewed turnips and tough, underdone pieces of dried
liver. They invite me to partake, handing me a pair of chopsticks and a
bowl.

Gangs of coolies, strung in Indian file along the paths, are met,
carrying lacquer-ware from some interior town to Fat-shau and Canton.
Others are encountered with cages of kittens and puppies, which they are
conveying to the same market. These are men whose business is collecting
these table delicacies from outlying villages for the city markets, after
the manner of egg and chicken buyers in America.

My course at length brings me to the town of Si-noun, on the south bank
of the Choo-kiang. The river is here prevented from inundating the low
country adjacent by strong levees; along these are well-tramped paths
that afford much good wheeling, as well as providing a well-defined
course toward Sam-shue. After following the river for some miles,
however, I conclude that its course is altogether more southerly than
there is any necessity for me to g